The Record: Contract bungling

WHAT'S most important to remember in the controversy surrounding the Paterson school district's $1 million contract with an outside consultant hired to help improve students' test scores is that the money in question is public money, taxpayer money, and not Monopoly money. Such contracts deserve a whole lot more scrutiny than this one apparently received.

As reported last week in The Record, Paterson's elected local school board never got the chance to vote on a 2012-13 contract the district entered into with the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Learning. The matter originally came to light this month during a presentation made to the board by the district's auditor. In that presentation, the contract was placed at $414,700. Later, an actual copy of the contract revealed that the total was $1,012,700.

"I could see if it was for $10,000, but if I missed a million-dollar contract, I wouldn't show up for work the next day," said board Finance Chairman Errol Kerr.

Kerr's degree of exasperation is understandable. Jeff Bliss, the auditor, recommended that future contracts "be approved in the official minutes as required by the Public School Contracts Law."

Indeed, city school officials should know better than this. State-appointed Superintendent Donnie Evans said the contract fell through the cracks during a district leadership transition. Terry Corallo, the district's spokeswoman, said the oversight happened because required paperwork was not completed during a time when new assistant superintendents were being appointed. Corallo noted that board members were aware of the institute's ongoing work in the district — work, apparently, that has paid off in improved test scores.

While that's all well and good, it doesn't excuse the slipshod operational failure to make known a public contract worth more than $1 million. We understand fully that the board's responsibilities in a state-controlled district are often vague, symbolic or functionary.

Yet bringing such contracts to be discussed before the board is simply the proper order of business, a basic transparency that should be the norm in all public contracts. The fact that Evans, ultimately, might have the last say on such contracts, or that he must answer to state authorities in Trenton, is not relevant to the greater overall issue of accountability.

The contract issue could not have come to light at a worse time — as school officials acknowledge a gap in the overall budget, estimated in the several millions of dollars, and perhaps a round of personnel cuts coming in the next two years.

Of course, the contract confusion, the back-and-forth between board and superintendent, also resurrects the debate concerning the efficacy of state control of the Paterson public schools, going on now more than 20 years. No matter who is in control, a $1 million consultant contract should never be rubber-stamped without the benefit of a public review and discussion.